THE DISH ON SOLAR

Solar energy industry R&D continues to focus on existing technologies and slowly, steadily, push efficiencies up and costs down. A recent study predicts existing solar technologies will achieve cost parity with other grid energy sources by 2015. (See SOLAR CAN BE 10% OF U.S. ELECTRICITY BY 2025)

Nevertheless, there is something about the sun that inspires the search for that NEXT disruptive technology. Is a concentrating dish that grew out of an MIT class project IT, The ONE?

Doug Wood, inventor: "This is actually the most efficient solar collector in existence…"

A wooden plank placed in the dish's concentrated beam burns and smokes almost instantly. More importantly, when the light and heat captured by the dish is focused on water in coiled tubing at the end of a 12-foot aluminum arm, the water almost instantly steams.

Turning water into steam to drive turbines is how most large-scale electric generation is done. Traditionally, the process requires the burning of coal or natural gas or a nuclear reaction. The power of the sun is preferable since it generates no greenhouse gases or radioactive waste.

The students' dish concept has been around for a long time but these college kids may have simplified it beyond solar energy industry researchers’ imagining. Necessity (or, in this case, a student budget) is the mother of invention.

Wood, on the MIT researchers’ development of his invention: "They really have simplified this and made it user-friendly, so anybody can build it…"

Maybe anybody can but the college kids are setting up a company and planning to sell arrays of their device to meet large-scale electrical needs with cheap clean solar energy.

“More power to them” is INappropriate because there really ISN'T more power than the sun, at least in this solar system.

The MIT project burns wood in a flash. (click to enlarge)

Inventors: Solar Dish Could Revolutionize Energy Production
June 19, 2008 (Live Science via Yahoo News)

WHO
RawSolar (partners: Doug Wood, inventor; Spencer Ahrens, mechanical engineering student Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); David Pelly, lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management

WHAT
A dish developed by the MIT student founders of RawSolar concentrates solar energy 1000-fold and is made from inexpensive, readily accessible materials.

Is this another step toward price parity for solar power plants? (click to enlarge)

WHEN
- There is presently one prototype, built as a student project.
- In mass production, the arrays could be made inexpensively enough and are efficient enough to pay for themselves in 2 years.

WHERE
The students see the best application for the high-output device as providing power to run industrial systems and for heating/cooling of large buildings.

The MIT project is really a cheap version of the Stirling Concentrator, fields of which will soon form solar power plants in Southern California. (click to enlarge)

WHY
- Calculations conclude the students’ dish concentrates the heat and light of the sun more efficiently than any established design.
- The frame is made from inexpensive lightweight aluminum tubing . The reflectors are strips of mirror.
- A 12-foot aluminum arm holds coiled tubing. When the light and heat captured by the dish is focused on the tubing, the water in it almost instantly steams.
- The inventors presently believe smaller dishes, because of their capacity to generate big outputs at low cost, make for the most practical design.

QUOTES
David Pelly, lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, on his students’ project: "I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen…And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."